Succession Planning & Leadership Pipeline Design
Build leaders before you need them. In five days you will design a complete succession and pipeline system — role mapping, assessment, development architecture, emergency cover and board governance — and defend it to a mock nominations committee.
The executive challenge
The problem this program solves
Succession failure is expensive and predictable: unplanned exits, sudden vacancies, talent poached because growth paths were invisible, and boards forced into emergency searches. This programme teaches succession as a system, not an annual slide: mapping the critical roles, assessing bench strength honestly, designing development moves that actually build readiness, preparing emergency cover, and governing the whole thing with the discipline a nominations committee would demand.
Context
Why this matters now
Capability
What you will be able to do
- Map critical roles and role requirements beyond the org chart: the positions that actually decide the future
- Assess the bench honestly: readiness frameworks, calibration and the biases that inflate it
- Design development architecture: stretch moves, mentoring, exposure — the mechanisms that build readiness
- Build emergency succession cover: interim plans and the day-one protocol
- Govern the pipeline: board involvement, review cadence and the metrics that keep it honest
- Handle the delicate conversations: the told, the untold and the departing
The IPAT Course Standard
The five-day journey
Each day is a deliberate progression in managerial capability — from strategic context, to analytical frameworks, to applied practice, to executive judgement under pressure, to a capstone that produces something your organisation keeps.
IPAT Signature Case™
The Successor Who Was Poached
Your CEO succession was on track: the designated successor, two years from the seat, has just accepted a group-CEO offer elsewhere. The incumbent had announced retirement in 18 months; the board’s internal bench now holds two credible-but-unready candidates and one loyal incumbent pushing to delay; a regulatory filing is due; and the market is watching.
Your decision: As board chair: accelerate an internal candidate with a risk-mitigated transition, open an external search with an extended incumbent timeline, or appoint an interim with a defined mandate — with continuity, credibility and the institution’s control all in play.
Real-World Case Study
Microsoft’s Succession: The Pipeline That Saved a Giant
When Steve Ballmer announced his retirement in 2013, Microsoft’s board ran a structured succession that produced Satya Nadella — an insider the pipeline had developed across platform, cloud and business roles. The choice is credited with the company’s cultural and market turnaround; the succession’s success is traced not to the search but to the bench architecture that made an internal option excellent.
The lesson: Great successions are built years before the vacancy: the role mapping, honest calibration and development moves this programme drills are what made Microsoft’s choice possible.
Day 5 · The Capstone
What will you change when you return to work?
Build the execution architecture for your institution's most important strategic commitment: decision rights, cadence, accountability, and your own first 90 days.
Methodology
Frameworks you will master
- • IPAT Executive Capability Model™
- • IPAT Strategic Execution Framework™
- • Critical-role and bench-readiness frameworks
- • Calibration and assessment governance
- • Emergency succession and interim-appointment practice
Career Outcomes
Where this program takes you
Salary bands reflect 2025–26 market benchmarking across African markets plus global mobility ranges.
Cohorts
Upcoming cohorts
New dates are being scheduled
Register with your preferred start date and our admissions team will match you to the next available cohort — or contact us to arrange an in-house delivery for your organisation.
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